


Service with a Smile

by icarus_chained



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Doctors & Physicians, Gen, Harassment, Male-Female Friendship, Medical, Medical Professionals, Nurses & Nursing, Prompt Fic, Rants, Workplace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-21
Updated: 2013-09-21
Packaged: 2017-12-27 06:14:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/975400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Leonard H. McCoy was a cranky bastard and the scariest person in Sickbay, that was common knowledge. Everyone knew it. One of these days, though, people were gonna learn better. And judging by the expression on Christine's face, today might well be that day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Service with a Smile

**Author's Note:**

> Tiny fic written for the prompt of: "Keep me away from the General Public for the next ten minutes and nobody gets hurt."

Dr. Leonard H. McCoy was a cranky bastard. This fact became readily apparent to most everyone, usually within a few minutes of meeting him. Less, if that first meeting was under less than stellar circumstances, which an alarming number of his first meetings with people tended to be. This was often the case for doctors, admittedly, but the tendency had been markedly exacerbated ever since he'd joined the madman's outfit that was the crew of the Federation Starship Enterprise.

(Privately, the good doctor was of the opinion that that ought to be Starfleet's unofficial tagline: "Starfleet: Meeting new and interesting people under less than stellar circumstances, and sometimes even managing to save someone's sorry ass in the process!" Well, either Starfleet's or his, one or the other).

It wasn't a surprise to people, therefore, that sometimes Dr. McCoy wasn't the most cheerful person to be around. Long-timers knew that there were certain days when he wasn't _safe_ to be around, let alone cheerful. By and large, they understood it, or at least learned to keep their traps shut about it until such a time as opening them wouldn't result in later having them re-attached by a less than sympathetic nursing staff who had to _live with him_ , you idiot, thank you _so much_ for sticking your nose where it wasn't wanted. The captain was a genius maniac who'd get you into all the trouble in the universe, the first officer was a logic-obsessed vulcan who'd probably get you back out of it, and the CMO was a cranky bastard who could cuss you out so hard your descendants would be wondering years later why certain words made them wince in atavistic alarm, but who could also put you back together even if you'd been brought to him in a teacup.

You took the rough with the smooth, was the point here. You took the rough with the smooth, the crazy with the genius, and barring that you were actually in the process of bleeding out at the time, you took a long, _long_ step backwards if you happened to walk into sickbay and Dr. McCoy was making _that_ face in your general direction.

The fact that it didn't surprise anyone anymore, though, didn't mean that they didn't nurse a certain amount of respect and/or pity for people who could not only _accept_ how much of a hard-headed cuss their doctor was, but actively ran the gauntlet of his temper on a daily or even hourly basis. With people like the captain or Spock, it was only to be expected, something you could put down to insanity or bravery or the protective calm of pure logic. With others, though, it could only be a case of sheer, raw stubbornness, and the patience of a saint.

There was not a soul aboard the Enterprise who didn't wonder how the medical staff did it, every goddamn day, but there was little doubt in anyone's mind that they were the unsung heroes of the ship because of it. 

Which only went to show, Len thought wryly, that the best kind of boss was the boss that drew all the attention off you, and made you look like a saint by comparison. 

Or possibly the worst. It depended on your point of view.

"I need ten minutes," Christine said flatly, not even waiting for the door to Leonard's office to hiss closed behind her before she stormed over to his desk and slammed her hands down on it in a way that suggested very, very clearly that at this point, comments and/or objections would _not_ be advisable.

Len, half out of his seat and mouth already open on a question, rapidly say back down and shut it again. Let it never be said that Mama McCoy's boy was a slow learner. 

"Ten minutes," Christine went on, her shoulders tight and quivering with repressed emotion, her temper rapidly and visibly fraying as she leaned over the desk to stab an angry, shaking finger in his direction. "Ten minutes with no _idiot disruptions_ , where no-one complains, and no-one starts arguing, and no-one comes in here with domineering attitude and a _sprained dick_ and expects me to smile sympathetically and not _bite their head off_ for talking down to me like that."

Alarmed, Len made to open his mouth again there. Alarmed, and beginning to be more than a little angry himself, because there were certain things he would not tolerate in his sickbay, and that sure as hell sounded like one of them. But Christine's finger darted from his chest straight up under his nose, a flash of pure warning in her eyes, and he rapidly decided to keep his peace a little longer.

"I need ten minutes," she said, a lot more softly this time. Not the soft of someone on their way to calming down, but the soft of someone who was only a second away from homicide and desperately needed people to be _very good_ in an effort to avoid it. "Because I'm the _nice_ one, and I'm the _patient_ one, and they deliberately bothered me because I'm not _Doctor Leonard McCoy_ and therefore wouldn't point their idiocy out to them in a ten minute tirade that would not only make them wet their pants and scare two years off their lives, but would also have been _incredibly therapeutic_ for me! And because I'm the nice one, and because we don't want to let the crew know that Dr Leonard McCoy is the _least_ terrifying member of this staff and thus prevent any of them from ever coming to sickbay again, I smiled sympathetically, and I asked him to just wait a few minutes while I checked something in his file, and then I came in here in the hopes that my very nice and helpful boss would let me rant in his face for ten minutes and thereby avoid my having to _stab someone_ somewhere that would make recovery _very painful_."

She sat down then. She wrenched her finger away from his face with a wordless snarl of frustration, and dropped down into his other chair to shove her hands through her hair and pant raggedly for a minute or two while she seemed to calm down. Leonard, extremely cautiously, leaned forward a little bit and gently laid his hand palm up on the desk in front of her.

"Well, that sounds like something any sane boss ought to be happy to help out with," he said carefully, and offered a tiny quirk of a smile when she lowered her hands to glare at him. "In the interests of preventin' homicide and keeping his truly exceptional and wonderfully patient staff sane and healthy, I mean." He gave a wry little shrug, and wiggled the fingers of the hand he'd held out to her until she took it with a long sigh, her shoulders practically unknotting even as he watched them. "My door is always open to people in need of a therapeutic rant about the idiocy and condescension of the world and everyone in it. You ought to know that by now."

She groaned, and tugged his hand up until she could drop her forehead heavily onto it. "I really should hate you," she muttered tiredly, her eyes closed and hidden behind their linked knuckles. "I never asked to be the nice one, you know. _Doctors_. There's nothing worse than doctors for a nurse's sanity."

"Oh, amen," Leonard agreed, taking his life in his hands and grinning faintly at her. "Hell, darlin', why'd you think I wanted to be one? Can you imagine how long I'd have lasted if I'd been a nurse? On _this_ ship?"

She snorted, which he suspected he could take as a yes, she could imagine pretty well indeed. But her hand was easy in his, her breathing had steadied massively, and a lot of the tension had leeched out of her frame. These were all points in his favour, and a little self-depreciating humour never hurt anybody. A sprained pride was better than a sprained friendship, after all.

"Now," he said softly, when she managed to look back up at him, her temper back under rigid and admirable control, and a significant degree of lucidity back in her gaze. "Do you want me to go out there and be the mean one and scare two years off his life? Or would you prefer to skip all that and just go out and stab him somewhere painful with a hypo, reputation for niceness be damned? Because I gotta tell you, Chris, if he's as much of a creep as he sounds, there won't be a man jack in this sickbay who wouldn't back you on it. Myself very much included." 

Because there were some circumstances when a man deserved to be terrified into showing a little bit of respect, and Leonard was firmly of the opinion that talking down to and imposing on a lady, regardless of her profession, was most definitely one of them. Doing so in _his goddamn sickbay_ , to the best damned nurse in Starfleet, skipped straight over deserving and signed you up for whatever damned punishment said lady felt was owing, and he was perfectly prepared to fight anyone who thought different.

"Look at it this way," he said, while Christine sat in front of him looking tired and frustrated and wryly hopeful, and his own rather famous temper decided enough was enough. "We're the best damn ship in the fleet, aren't we? We're captained by Jim Kirk, we're crewed by the best and the bravest, and if they can't handle a bit of meanness when they're disrespectful in our sickbay, well then they ain't gonna last that long out here _anyway_ , are they?" He smirked softly, low and slow and cold. "We're far from the worst they're gonna meet out here, and the best friends they'll ever have once the shit hits the fan, so a little bit of respect and maybe some mild terror are probably the _least_ they owe us. Don't you think?"

She pursed her lips, her hand tightening around his for a second. And then she exhaled, a long, steadying breath, and met his eyes with a pained little smirk of her own. 

"I think," she said slowly, "that all our patients are entitled to the best medical care Starfleet has to offer. I _also_ think that actions have consequences, and that right now there's a man in my sickbay who needs a corrective hypospray in more than one sense, and who I will be _happy_ to offer the assistance he deserves. Sympathetic smile and all."

And if Leonard privately thought that 'sympathetic', in this case, meant something closer to 'deeply and atavistically terrifying', well, he also suspected that was entirely the point.

"Just remember," he warned cheerfully, as she stood up and sharpened the blade of her smile into something that might give even _Jim_ pause. "I'm the scariest, alright? I know it's only nominally my sickbay, but a CMO needs to have _some_ pride. So I'm the crankiest, scariest bastard on this ship, we're all agreed."

She looked at him, and she smiled, and she leaned over to kiss him gently on the cheek. "That's what we tell them," she agreed, and damn if he wasn't laughing along with her.

Yeah. That was what they told them, alright. Dr. Leonard H. McCoy was a cranky bastard, and the nursing staff had the patience of saints, and when you walked into sickbay it was him you had to be scared of. Yes sirree, that's what they said.

Ah well. They were the best and brightest up here, weren't they? Surely that meant they'd learn soon enough.

And if they didn't, well. Len thought he knew just who'd show 'em different.


End file.
